…This article is third in a series. The previous two were the 20th and 21st of October, 2010…
In the immediate period of the South after the Civil War (1865), there was a severe shortage of white males and a surplus of newly freed blacks. In the competition between them, whites had the decided advantage of greater political and social resources.
Private Prison Industry...
For several years, the Union Army and the Freedman’s Bureau enforced emancipation, but by 1877 the Republican Party surrendered the South in return for the election. The stage was set for Jim Crow and mass black criminalization. 
Labor-intensive industries, such as cotton, lent themselves to plantation organization. Within short order, a number of Black Codes were specifically created to provide the law and sanctions to maintain this labor. These included the Vagrancy Act, which provided that all blacks over the age of 18 must provide proof of a job at the beginning of every year. more…
